Week 4 — Knowledge I: Doubt, Reason, and Experience

Why this matters

A nursing student trusting a monitor's reading and a journalist checking whether a video call is real both face this week's question: what can you know, and does it come from reason or experience?

In plain language

This week asks two old questions: what can you know for sure, and where does your knowledge come from? One answer, rationalism (the view that some real knowledge of the world comes from thinking alone), says careful reasoning can take you there. The other answer, empiricism (the view that all knowledge of the world comes from experience), says everything you know started with what you saw, heard, felt, and noticed. You follow one thinker who doubted almost everything to see what was left, and two thinkers who traced knowledge back to experience. You also meet a puzzle about predictions, and your goal is to state each side fairly and test it, not to pick a winner.

• Already covered: Weeks 1–3 gave you counterexamples, standard form and validity, and Plato's worry about appearances.
• This week: rationalism and empiricism, Descartes' doubt and the cogito, Locke's white paper, and Hume's problem of induction.
• How they connect: you test Descartes' answer with Week 2's tools.
• Where we're going next: Week 5 asks what knowledge is.

Focus

What can you know for sure, and does knowledge come from reason or from experience?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] state rationalism and empiricism at their strongest
• [ ] put the cogito in standard form and judge it valid
• [ ] credit "I think, therefore I am" to the right book and translator
• [ ] explain Locke's white paper and Hume's problem of induction

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 4 (~40–50 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
3. Do the practice exercises (15–25 minutes).
4. Do the Philosophy Workshop (about 90 minutes), discussion, and assignment.
5. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: name the book and translator behind "I think, therefore I am" and key argument 1 for validity.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if stuck.

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